XChange Panelists Discuss Benefits of Benchmarking

The benchmark results offer an accurate, timely and low-cost resource of daily service measurements and monthly industry benchmarks. Based on customer feedback obtained hours or days after service contracts, the program provides participating members with ongoing measurements of their people, products and processes, and their performance vs. their field service (break/fix), technical support (help desk) or depot service peers.

Panelists from IBM's personal computing division, Nexinnovations, Compucom, and the channel support business of HP Americas shared experiences and gave sound examples of how this quarterly research service has provided them with valuable, unbiased, third-party insight and feedback on where they are excelling, as well as where they could use improvement, training and development within their own customer service environments.

The panelists agreed this benchmarking service offers benefits and opportunities to receive and understand accurate assessments of their own people, products, processes and customers and how they compare to the rest of the industry, which is critical to their competitive business strategy. They said regular quarterly reports make it easy to compare their company's performance to the industry, and allow them to make quick, timely and appropriate adjustments to their customer service initiatives, in a rapidly changing marketplace, where speed and the ability to make immediate, necessary adjustments is crucial to their customer satisfaction, profits and ROI.